The Suit of Obsidior: Where It All Began

 Hey everybody, so for Obsidior, I wanted to talk about the suit today. When I was thinking about it, I had to consider the state Joseph Young was actually in. He's a salvager, and my challenge was figuring out what his suit would look like in that context. I wanted it to feel old, not the best quality, but still functional. It's a space story after all, so it still needs all the essential equipment and still has to feel futuristic, you know?

So I started looking at art styles on Pinterest, which I'm sure many of you authors already know is a really great source of inspiration. I found this image that I saved, and I tried my best to find the author. I couldn't. So if you're the author and you ever come across this, thank you. It was truly beautiful and it gave me exactly what I was looking for.

This suit was an inspiration in the sense that it carries that classic feel of old space suits, but more flexible. Not ninja karate moves flexible, but he can move a lot better than what we have today. And that's where I was really thinking about the character. The suit still has that element of comfort, but it's also inadequate for the kind of situation Joseph is facing in the story. That contrast is exactly why I love it.

My goal with this suit, and why it ended up on the cover, is that it holds a lot of clues. It's also where everything begins. The scary things, not horror exactly, but the unsettling things, they start to emerge while he's in that suit. For me, that made it one of the most essential parts of the story.

I also didn't want it to feel like a copy of Dead Space, even though you all know how much that game inspired me. Dead Space's iconic suit is an engineer's suit, built and equipped for a specific purpose. Joseph's suit is just a basic spacesuit. Simple. I thought about giving him a proper scavenger's suit, something with more character, but it felt like too much for this type of character. He's the lowest of the scavengers. The basic spacesuit just made more sense, and honestly it fits him perfectly.

So that's the story behind the suit. And yes, some of you might be wondering about Alice. That's going to stay a spoiler for now. I usually give myself about three to four months before I start opening up about those kinds of details, and we're not quite there yet. But the day will come.

For now, I just wanted to give credit where it's due for the inspiration behind the suit, and share a little bit of how the creative process behind Obsidior actually worked. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this little topic.

Obsidior: Amazon